


need against need against need

by dollylux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bottom Dean, Dry Sex, Emotional Sex, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Sharing Clothes, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:29:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Jack spends his first night in the bunker with Sam and Dean. (Jack POV)





	need against need against need

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Jack. He was so much fun to write<3
> 
> (Title from Richard Siken. Of course.)

The journey from North Cove, Washington to Lebanon, Kansas takes just over twenty-four hours. Jack spends the first of the trip contemplating time, wanting to ask Sam questions about the numbers assigned to increments of the day and who decided they should be so, but neither Dean or Sam speaks much. Most of the seventeen-hundred miles passes in silence.

But when he asks how long to where they need to be, Sam turns just enough for Jack to see the quick-sketch line of his nose and the grey in his eyes and says, “We’ll be home soon.”

The moon is high above them when Dean finally stops the car, and Jack can sense the pain in him, the ache in his limbs from driving for so long, the blinding throb of a migraine behind his eyes, and the bottomless devastation of loss that permeates every movement, that leaves his physical body in a fine tremor that spreads all the way down to the tips of his fingers.

He wants to ask Sam if he notices it, if this is normal, how they usually arrive home, but he doesn’t know what to say if the answer is yes. He follows the Winchesters inside, down into the ground.

Dean walks right through the sprawling library and continues into a passageway that seems to lead to a series of rooms. Sam stares after him and Jack watches Sam, knowing that he should feel out of place, that he should feel uncomfortable, that the emotions that were trapped in the car with them and that have followed them into this underground home are real ones, ones that change the shape of something in a human being.

He wants to understand. Wants to feel this sorrow, to know if it’s sharp or if it tastes metallic like blood, wants to know if it feels cavernous or cold or dark. He wants to feel a camaraderie with these two, with Sam and Dean Winchester, but all he can do is watch the emotions play on their faces, catalogue their grief. Observe human suffering.

“I’m hungry,” he tells Sam. He knows it’s not appropriate, that it’s perhaps rude, but he hasn’t eaten anything since all the sweet candy foods he had with Clark on the floor at the police department. His body seems to think that this is urgent.

“Oh,” Sam says, like he’s just woken up. He stirs, blinking a few times and shoving his hair back from his face with two giant hands. Jack thinks that perhaps Sam looks like some large, powerful animal, one of a physical size that could do real harm, but he doesn’t have the heart for it. Not here, when he’s not on the job anyway. “Yeah. Of course you are. Shit, ah. C’mon. I’ll find something for you to--”

Sam wanders off before he finishes the thought, and Jack follows, eyes darting around the golden-lit space, the shelves and shelves of books, thousands of pages of knowledge, every inch of it orderly and well-dusted and swept. Pride. There’s pride in this place. It’s a home that isn’t taken for granted.

The kitchen is a large one, much bigger than the one in the house where Jack was born and spent the small seconds of his childhood, and Sam moves around it like he’s lived here his whole life.

“There’s, um. Chicken salad. Dean made it the other day. I don’t know how fresh it is, but--”

“That sounds fine,” Jack replies, not sure what chicken salad is or if Dean is a good chicken salad maker, but he doesn’t want to keep Sam. He can tell just in a glance that Sam’s entire being is angled toward that hallway Dean disappeared into, that there are countless, gossamer-like threads connecting those two bodies, invisible things that stretch and shimmer and shudder and survive. They’re stretched to the point of worry right now.

What a fascinating pair they are.

Sam babbles a little more about chicken salad, talking about bread and crackers and water, and a plate with a stack of whole grain slices and a pile of crunchy discs next to a small mountain of chunky chicken salad is placed in front of Jack, along with a pitcher of water, a glass, a fork, and a napkin. Sam’s smile is strained and exhausted but kind.

“This okay?”

“This is fine, Sam. Thank you.” Jack picks up his fork and gets a glimmer of thought that his mother would be proud of his manners. 

“That, uh. That hallway, where…” Sam starts, stalling out yet again. Jack stuffs some salad in his mouth and chews, nodding with food-fattened cheeks when he looks up at Sam again. “I’ll, um. I’ll put some clothes out for you to change into. Something to sleep in and a towel and stuff. You can sleep in there. It’s beside mine and D--”

Jack chews and watches him, his expression not changing while Sam flushes and fidgets and fights for words.

“I’ll be in the room right beside it, on the left. If you need anything.”

Jack swallows down the chewed-up food, reaching instinctively for his water. That was really good.

“Thank you, Sam,” he says, the words blurry around the food.

“Goodnight, Jack,” Sam replies, already dropping the act before he even turns away. Jack can see the shine of tears in his eyes and the faintest tremble of his chin. Jack feels something dull and bruisey in his chest, like he’s been hit there from the inside.

 _That’s sympathy_ , he hears in his mother’s voice, soft in the back of his mind. The emotion and the memory of her makes him smile, keeps him company as he has his second meal ever, and his first one alone.

 

The hallway is low-lit and easy to navigate, but there are so many turns and so many rooms that Jack almost sighs with relief when he finds a neat, folded pile of clothes outside of one door. He picks them up and smells Dean on them, and he wonders what Sam did to convince Dean to let Jack borrow some of his clothes.

He may only be a few days old, but Jack can tell when he’s not liked.

The t-shirt is black and worn-soft and has the words SKID ROW written across the top in an imperfect, defiant red. The image of humans below is faded, but Jack can see guitars and long hair and smirks. The pants are plaid and so buttersoft that they nearly feel damp. They feel so nice on his bare skin, on his penis that has been trapped in tight jeans for two days. The t-shirt has the comfort of a history, of belonging, and it makes him feel more firmly planted to the earth, to this home, to this very room.

The sudden rise of Dean’s voice from the next room startles Jack.

He stands perfectly still, the age-spotted hem of the shirt still caught between his thumb and forefinger. His hearing is exceptional, and while he can’t quite make out the conversation, he can hear the low thud of booted footfall, can hear the volley of words in voices that have echoed together in shared spaces thousands upon thousands of times. Jack can tell. Their voices have a shared reverberation, a sound specific to just their twinned tones, like a note of music or maybe even an entire spectrum of notes.

A symphony. Sam and Dean are perhaps a symphony.

The door doesn’t creak when he opens it and steps back out into the hall, and he moves as if in a dream of his own when he takes the few steps to stand in front of Sam and Dean’s door, his eyes falling closed as he tips his head forward to rest on the solid wood so he can listen. 

_Shh, just listen to the song,_ his mother says, headphones on her belly, desperate to stop Jack’s impatient kicks. _You can learn things from music. You just have to listen._

He doesn’t know how the brothers’ door opens or how they don’t hear it when it does, but he’s peeking in through a crack and can see them both, Sam in a dark grey t-shirt and briefs that come to mid-thigh, and he’s on his knees by the bed, hair back in a thoughtless ponytail as he stares up at his brother. At Dean who is wearing the filthy red and black flannel shirt that Sam had worn for days, that he’d been wearing up until about ten minutes ago, but it’s open and showing his pale chest and the soft heft of his cock draped over one thigh, and he’s staring right into Sam’s eyes, and he’s crying.

The room smells like the haunt of burning flesh, like a funeral pyre, like a goodbye. Jack is soundless when he steps inside and stands in the shadows in the nearest corner of the room. He needs to see. Needs to hear their music. What they have and what they are are singularly important. No one has to tell him that. No one has to explain that this love is different.

“How much more can we lose?” Dean says, and it’s so, so soft, so very different from the gruff snarls Jack has heard out of him since the first few minutes of life. Sam’s thumb strokes over and over the thick, muscled softness of Dean’s upper thigh, so close to his cock that Jack feels heat spread over his cheeks. He wants to watch it, to see if Sam has any effect on it with those touches, but the imploring in Dean’s voice makes him pay close attention to their faces.

“We’ll figure it out,” Sam promises, sounding older, like he knows for certain. And maybe he does. It doesn’t take years on earth to see that these brothers have experienced a lot. Survived a lot. Jack relaxes back against the wall, safe in the shadows, and he doesn’t hear how quick and shallow his own breathing is, doesn’t realize that he isn’t blinking as he falls into the thrum of them, into the rhythm of Sam and Dean Winchester.

Sam tips his head down and kisses at Dean’s knobby knee, and he turns to nuzzle at Dean’s hand when it gets near, his tongue sliding out slick and pink to lap at dried blood along Dean’s knuckles, to kiss and kiss and kiss at broken and bruised skin and pull the quietest, most hurt noise out of Dean that Jack nearly sinks to his knees.

So, this is love.

“Sammy,” Dean whispers, that busted hand on Sam’s cheek, fingers tucking long brown hair behind Sam’s ear, and then one brother is tugging the other one forward and Sam’s mouth is so pink Jack can imagine in vivid, heated detail exactly what it must’ve looked like when he was a little boy, and that tongue that still tastes of blood slips out to curl around the thick pale and pinked meat of Dean’s dick.

Jack can almost pluck a number out of the air, one that makes more sense than time, one that represents the number of times Sam has had this exact penis in his mouth, has been on his knees for this precise moment of worship. It’s a big number, a long one, and Sam slides down the length of Dean’s cock with an ease that tells Jack his mouth and throat have grown up and around this exact part of his brother’s body. 

It’s beautiful, it’s heady and immediately desperate and Dean doesn’t force anything, doesn’t do much at all besides suck on his bottom lip and pet his little brother and watch him in a kind of soft awe as he moves in steady, savoring back and forward motion that Dean seems to love, that makes him grow thicker on Sam’s tongue, makes his cheeks redder, makes the low sounds scraping along his throat deepen into near-growls.

Jack isn’t breathing when he sees the tears still falling from Dean’s eyes, splashing in Sam’s greasy hair as he curls down over his brother who is buried in his lap, dick in his throat now and it’s a wet, internal sucking sound, an involuntary one happening in Sam’s throat that almost sounds like a swallow.

“Fuck me, Sammy,” Dean whispers as he noses at Sam’s hair, fingers tangling in his hair to tug up, to get his now stiff and shining-wet cock out of Sam’s throat so he can dip down and shove his mouth against Sam’s, and Jack wonders what it tastes like, licking into a mouth that has been nursing on a part of your body, being fed saliva that has the flavor of how much someone loves you. Neither of them seem to mind, and neither of them startle when they both stand up at once and reach for each other like they’re drowning.

“Please, I need it,” Dean’s saying as Sam yanks his shirt off over his head while he kisses at Dean’s throat, both of them working to shove Sam’s underwear down and off. Sam looks wild now, not at all like the docile animal Jack had seen in the kitchen, the gentle giant who only indulges in violence as a part of his job.

The set of his jaw, the fire in his eyes, the way he grabs his big brother up under his armpits and shoves him against the wall so hard the guns perfectly lined up there rattle, one of them slipping from its rack and hitting the floor near their feet.

Neither of them flinch.

Dean’s legs have a natural spread to them, and it’s nothing for him to climb his brother’s long body and wrap them around his narrow waist, the filthy flannel shirt they’ve both worn half off of him now, hanging down off of one shoulder in a way that looks so seductive, so wantonly sexual that Jack feels the very first tinge of arousal, feels it like a low, fiery tug deep in his belly. Very deep.

“If I lost you--” Dean starts, and he’s not short on words tonight like Sam is, not trapped in the jumble of them. It’s Sam who interrupts him, who surges forward and kisses him like the first bite of a meal, like the kind of ravenous relief Jack had felt both times he’d touched sustenance to his lips. So much like that. Exactly like that.

Like this is survival.

“Shut up,” Sam huffs, his tongue a visible flick of muscle connecting their mouths while he grips at Dean’s body with both of his oversized hands, squeezing ass and thighs like he’s testing their suppleness, leaving behind very clear red handprints in his wake. He lifts one hand to spit on his fingers, and it disappears again, this time dipping low in a place that Jack can’t quite see.

Dean makes another noise, another sound like pain, but the gentle way his eyelashes flutter before he shuts his eyes and the shocking sweetness of his parted mouth as he rests his head back against the wall tells Jack that he wants this. That he’s more than okay with it.

Jack can hear it more than see it, and it’s a slick, steady noise, a sound like impatient prying that has Dean arching against the wall and moaning up at the ceiling and has Sam kissing at Dean’s bared throat in a way that isn’t entirely sweet, that isn’t without teeth and the threat of using them.

Jack can’t imagine baring his throat to anyone. To let anybody’s teeth scrape such a vulnerable place, to give anyone the chance to inflict the kind of violence Sam is threatening right now.

He wonders if what he’s feeling is normal or if the depth of their trust for each other is.

He looks down Sam’s body and sees his penis for the first time, and he has to close his throat up around the noise that tries to escape. It’s enormous, proportionate to the rest of Sam’s massive body, and it’s standing up so straight and erect that it’s curved up against Dean’s ass and dripping steady and wet on the floor in front of his feet like water.

It takes a reach down and a furrowed look of pained concentration on Sam’s face, but pretty soon the muscles and veins in Sam’s arms bulge and he lets out a relieved sigh just as Dean sobs, his entire body tensing and rocking in Sam’s grip, trapped between Sam’s mass and the immovable wall.

“Sammy,” Dean breathes, the word coming out in two separate huffs so soft that Jack isn’t even sure if he actually said it. They’re looking at each other again, Dean’s arms wrapped tight around Sam’s neck and Sam with one long arm around Dean’s lower back and the other one cupping his ass, trying to grip the whole of it in the wide sprawl of his hand.

Jack knows without really knowing that this is sex, this is mating, this is putting one part of your body inside of someone else’s and seeing if you can finally fit all of it there so you don’t have to separate again.

He thinks it sounds a lot like dying.

Sam moves slow at first, all the perfect lines of his body flexing and rippling as he grinds into his brother, all of his long dick somehow tucked into Dean’s body, held safe and warm there where he can push forward and move it around, trying to let as much of Dean’s insides feel him as possible.

He wants it, suddenly. For them to be able to climb inside of each other. Wishes he could give it to them, let one of them slip inside of the other one’s skin so completely that their fingers spread out in the other’s hands, that their bones creak and grind and resist and finally turn to dust only to reform together, housing shared organs and protected by joined meat and skin and kept alive by a conjoined heartbeat. It would be euphoric for them, the ultimate closeness. It would be monstrous and divine and permanent.

He finds himself sitting at the foot of the bed now, just behind them. Watching the dance of muscles along Sam’s broad back, the hard flex of his tight ass, the exact shade of white of Dean’s knuckles as he hugs Sam’s neck and the erotic, almost feminine way Dean’s feet twitch and arch as he is given Sam’s cock, the sweet twist and curl and stretch of Dean’s toes.

The sounds of them are untranslatable, a primordial language that exists only between these two souls, between their physical bodies. The percussive rhythm of their strange song. Sam beats Dean against the wall in unrestrained violence, and the deep suck of Dean’s hidden insides show an acceptance of it that goes way beyond simply allowing this to happen. Dean’s body requires this of Sam’s tonight. This is the connection they need tonight.

They’re kissing like feeding when Sam lifts Dean away from the wall and angles them toward their marriage bed where Jack is watching, and so they don’t see him right away. It takes Sam throwing Dean onto the bed and flipping him over to his knees for a small break in the intensity to happen, and it’s while Dean grabs a pillow from the head of the bed and wraps his arms around it so he can bury his face in it and Sam gets both hands on Dean’s ass to pull his cheeks apart so wide that he’s spread completely that Sam glances up and sees Jack. Freezes.

“Jack--” Sam starts, and his voice sounds so normal again that it’s startling. Dean lifts his head, his face red from exertion and lack of oxygen, and he looks equal parts furious and mortified when he sees Jack less than a foot away, sitting on the very edge of the bed and unable to look away from the way Sam holds Dean open, from the angry red-rimmed gape of Dean’s asshole that is mouthing at nothing, looking for Sam like a baby bird begging for food.

“I just want to see,” Jack says softly, not sure those are the right words, if he will make any sense at all. He licks his lips and shifts on the bed, leaning forward just enough to try and see inside of Dean, into the dark depths where Sam has been so many times there’s surely marks left, there’s a rearrangement of Dean’s guts like a fingerprint that anybody would be able to feel, if they got in there. 

“H-He’s beautiful,” he continues, eyes flicking up to catch Sam’s, feeling an alien heat creeping up his face. “This. This is beautiful. What you are together is… is like the formation of a galaxy. It’s like… a-a lion feasting on a gazelle. It’s the sky during a thunderstorm. It’s necessary. It’s violence and pure destruction and pure creation and beyond physical bodies. Don’t be ashamed. Please. Don’t stop.”

Sam chews on his bottom lip and looks down at the long line of Dean’s body while Dean lowers his eyes to the bed, to the pillow damp with his own spit and tears and faint drops of blood from the cut on his mouth made fresh again. He waits Sam out, lets him decide. Jack feels like he’s waiting to be sentenced. He doesn’t know how he will survive if he can’t see this. Can’t know how this will end.

Sam responds by looking away, by gripping a tight handful of Dean’s ass in one hand so he can let go with the other one, and he uses it to grip his dick and catch it on Dean’s hole, and everyone in the room draws in a breath at the exact same time when Sam sinks back inside. It shudders through them all, the relief of the rejoin, and Jack moves from the edge of the bed to the desk chair just two feet away so that he can see from the side, so he can watch the way their bodies work together.

The flannel is on the floor and they’re both naked now, and Sam’s rhythm on the bed is much more savage than the grinding one when he’d had Dean against the wall. It’s sharp and deeply-packed and powerful, and the strength of it ripples through Dean’s body in his softest places, in the pillowy curve of his ass, in the thick of his thighs, in the barely-there pooch of his belly. Sam grips Dean’s hips and uses the solid weight of Dean’s body as leverage to lean back and hold on and fuck him--yes, yes that’s what this is right here, this is _fucking_ \--working up a sweat that pours down from his hair to his face and his neck and his chest and catches in the hairs that swirl along his belly, and Dean’s focuses along his back, glittering over his shoulders on top of pale freckles and pooling in the arch of his back just above the shuddering flesh of his ass.

Sam glances over at Jack with a smirk when Dean starts to heave deeply retrieved, long cries into the pillow, muffled like he’s used to having to stifle noise, like he’s used to having to keep this a secret. 

This shouldn’t be a secret. This should be required knowledge.

Dean lifts up to suck in a full, fresh lungful of air, his face nearly purple and shining with tears and sweat, his mouth dripping with drool that he can’t seem to control. He whines, long and plaintive, and he arches obediently under Sam’s hand that travels in a loving stroke up the notches of his spine and ends in a tight grip at the back of Dean’s neck.

He’s buried so deep inside of Dean that Jack swears he can see the pulse of it in the profile of Dean’s belly, just above his beautifully shaped, leaking dick. 

“Do you wanna come?” Sam asks, a question Jack can tell is unnecessary, but it draws a tremble out of Dean that has to feel so good around Sam’s cock. Jack shivers in acute, wondrous empathy for both of them. Dean nods, all his sounds nonverbal now, and his eyes are closed tight, brows furrowed, whole body tensed. Like he’s trying not to take control of this, like he’s forcing himself to stay submissive and not use Sam’s dick until he gets what he wants.

The thought of Dean, of instinctively violent, strutting, snarling Dean taking control of Sam’s much bigger body gives Jack that same feeling, that twinge of lust, and this time it’s distinctly focused between his legs.

They all refocus when Sam lays down on top of Dean, burying him against the soft mattress and lining their bodies up until they’re all but stuck together, nestled in tight. Sam spreads his long legs and straddles Dean’s ass while he wraps his arms around Dean’s neck, cutting off his air and baring it once again for Sam’s mouth, his teeth. Dean is already trembling.

Jack is two feet away, his knees brushing the rumpled blankets covering the small bed, but he can’t hear the words Sam’s whispering in Dean’s ear while he grinds bone-deep inside of him, setting up a rut that is pure animal, that makes this seem like some kind of biological imperative instead of just pleasure, just comfort. 

Mating. Sam is putting something vital inside of Dean. Leaving a part of himself that will change Dean forever.

The sounds of them have changed, like they’ve entered a different part of the movement. The last refrain. The bed groans under their struggle, under the pressure of flesh and bones grinding, under the strained dig of Sam’s hips that keep him moving inside of Dean.

Dean is making last-breath sounds.

Sam is still talking to Dean, still breathing out those low, brother-language words, some idioglossia that doesn’t exist beyond them, that has as much to do with working an orgasm out of Dean as the deep, secret movements of Sam’s cock inside of him. Dean is nodding, tiny movements as he licks and sucks the blood from his own lip, tears falling as he whispers _yeah, mm-hmm, yeah-Sammy-yes,_ voice ragged, breaths slow and struggling as Sam’s thick arm tightens and tightens.

When Dean comes, it’s like an avalanche, like a wave that crashes over all of them, pulling them all under and drowns them right along with him. He shakes apart under Sam, convulsing on his cock that Sam pushes into him in fevered, vicious snaps of his hips, only the red-shot whites of his eyes showing as he chokes out sounds so loud that Jack’s ears pop. Blood splashes on Dean’s pristine white pillow from the widened cut on his lip, and Sam uses the length of his beautiful body to curl down over Dean and get at his mouth, kissing and tonguing at the slack pink of it. When he finally lets go of Dean’s neck, he all but collapses down on the mattress, sucking in sluggish, heaving breaths as his face turns from purple back to a healthy, flushed pink.

It’s a grace period, a kindness from Sam, giving Dean this moment for his own. It’s almost like Sam savors this as much as he’s going to when it’s his turn. 

“ _Ohhh_ ,” Dean whimpers when Sam starts up again, when he starts digging again into Dean’s blown-out, aching hole, and Jack moves again and sits at the head of the bed this time, leaning down to look, to watch, to see the pull out of Dean’s pink when Sam lifts his hips, his movements so fast and rough and imperfect now that Dean can’t keep up, can’t push back in any kind of rhythm, can’t do anything but lie there like he’s barely alive and just take it, let Sam use his body to get where he needs to go.

He’s such a good big brother, and Jack wants to tell him so.

Dean makes sounds that are excruciating, that are like a knife’s in his gut and it’s slicing him open painfully slow, savoring the drag. Sam’s got the flat of his forearm along the back of Dean’s neck, across the flushed spread of his shoulders, and he’s hyper-focused and paying no mind to the way Dean sounds like he’s bleeding out beneath him. 

“Yes,” Jack whispers with all the breath left in his body, his teeth grinding together when he sees the way Sam’s asshole throbs and his dick flexes and starts to pulse.

Sam bares his teeth when he comes, the bed jolting along under the combined weight of three grown men as he leaves everything he can inside of Dean’s softened guts as his hips stab at Dean’s ass, making it bounce even as it’s mashed deep by the push of Sam’s sharp hips. He growls with every nasty twist, his perfect white teeth nipping at Dean’s neck, at his jaw, at his throat that lets out weak, hoarse dying noises where he lies utterly pliant tucked beneath his brother.

The squelch of where Sam’s still buried in him is loud now that there’s creamy white leaking out, where Dean’s too loose to keep it all in. Jack wants so badly to reach out and touch, to feel the coarse-haired curve of skin between Sam’s asshole and his testicles that is still visibly throbbing, to push his finger into Dean alongside Sam’s cock so he can feel the heat and tightness, can feel the sacred join for himself. He wants to taste it, what Sam gave to Dean, the hot gush of it that keeps oozing out every time one of them moves. He wants to taste their sweat and see if it’s different, wants to join their kiss just once and know the flavor of their combined saliva. He wants to tame Sam’s messy hair that’s all but fallen out of its ponytail and he wants to cup Dean’s face and stare into his eyes to try and see it, the wild drunken obsession of their love. 

He wants to take it into himself, the amalgamation of this act, their long history, and the intangible otherness of whatever Heaven decided they needed to be to each other. He wants it. Salivates for it. Feels a frantic throb of heat that needs it, too.

A glance up at Sam makes him back up completely, not stopping until he’s standing beside the bed and all but cowering. 

_It’s not yours to have,_ that look says. A lion protecting its mate from a threat. Jack doesn’t feel all-powerful. Not now. Not in this room, in the face of what he’s just seen. He submits with the lowering of his eyes, and he takes step after step back towards the door until he can touch the cool brass knob with his palm. Sam relaxes on top of Dean, in no hurry to leave or move, and he drops his gaze from Jack who’s no longer a threat and kisses across Dean’s sweaty back and his overheated neck. They’re still moving together; the slightest, barely visible pushes of their bodies together, matching the slowing sounds of their wed heartbeats that Jack can somehow hear even from the doorway.

Even after he closes the door behind him and is left alone in the quiet hall, and even after he returns to his own room and his own bed, tucked beneath the covers.

It’s a part of him now, the sound of their hearts, the pulse of their unquestionable oneness. He feels just as altered as they are, and even though he’s utterly alone here in this room, on this planet, they’re a part of him now.

_I have to protect them._

It’s the last thought he has as sleep takes him, and he dreams the strange dreams of a being that shouldn’t exist.


End file.
